A Program That Turns Doctors into Muckrakers

Robert Steiner

By Robert Steiner

Published on 21st. November, 2017

For years, the growing traffic in Canadian high school girls — picked up in Toronto’s suburbs and pushed into the sex trade — was a secret story. Then, last winter, a journalist joined police investigating the traffickers and started speaking with the middle class teenagers who were their victims. On January 29, Seema Marwaha broke the story for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Dr. Marwaha wasn’t part of CBC’s investigative team. She wasn’t even a normal reporter. She’s a doctor. My colleagues and I at the University of Toronto were in the midst of training her to work as a journalist. She’d heard about the trafficking problem through her work in the community.

The University of Toronto has now trained 17 doctors and health professionals along with 58 other specialists to work as journalists, some of whom have quickly become award-winning reporters. As their bylines and credits pile up, we’re starting to ask: What more can this new kind of beat reporter do to support investigative journalism’s new golden age?

The emerging ecosystem of collaborations, outlets and funding models convening this month in Johannesburg for the Global Investigative Journalism Conference (#GIJC17) is edging towards a talent crunch. Over the next decade, increasingly complex investigations will need a pipeline of journalists with deep subject matter knowledge, but most journalism schools are still turning out generalists who, unlike reporters of the past, probably won’t even keep staff jobs long enough to learn a beat.

Five years ago, we launched a new kind of journalism school to fill the hole: The Fellowship in Global Journalism at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. We only recruit subject-matter experts, few of whom have any journalism experience. Over eight months we usher them into careers as independent journalists by mentoring them closely as they cover their beats for our media partners around the world.

We’ve graduated 75 with 15 more in the pipeline this year — a mix of doctors, lawyers, religion scholars, scientists, architects, military officers, economists and others from around the world. Their expertise yields fast impact. Before even graduating, our fellows have broken 698 stories for our media partners – 19 outlets that now include The Washington Post, VICE, Quartz and The Boston Globe – along with other outlets like The New York Times and The Guardian.

Their performance after graduation underscores the hunger for more specialized reporters. The Dallas Morning News hired one public health doctor after our fellowship who went on to receive an Emmy, a Knight Fellowship and was a Pulitzer finalist — all within her first three years in the newsroom. Within a year of graduating, a Canadian criminologist we taught received a National Magazine Award honorable mention for his first investigative story. A climate change engineer we recruited from Colombia has become one of his country’s leading environment reporters.

Even as other J-Schools struggle to find internships for their graduates, many of our small band have been snapped up by The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, the CBC and VICE – as well as a think tank in India and the Dutch foreign ministry. Others mix their professional day jobs with journalism, like The New Yorker’s Atul Gawande.

New investigative outfits should be working with them, too.

Consider the 17 doctors and health professionals we’ve turned into reporters. It turns out that we launched our program at the very moment that many med schools were trying to change the way young doctors work. They now teach “narrative medicine” so doctors can better understand patients through their personal stories, and “knowledge translation” so health scientists can communicate new discoveries in a way that actually changes health care. Canadian medical schools even encourage fourth-year residents to take time away from the clinic altogether in order to study some public dimension of their work – like epidemiology, policy or journalism.

This article was first published in GIJNand is reproduced here with due permission. You can read the full extract here

Syed Nazakat

Founder, Centre for Investigative Journalism, New Delhi

At the CIJ, India we stand for free, independent and watchdog journalism. Our aim is to share the skills, values and expertise to serve the larger public good and advance the cause of free society. Our endeavour is to create networks of innovation, collaboration and cooperation to grow and make a difference. The change is not only possible, it’s happening.

David E. Kaplan, Executive Director

Global Investigative Journalism Network, Washington

If you care about democracy, accountability, and transparency, then you should care about the new Center for Investigative Journalism in India. The CIJ is in the forefront of a global movement that is taking on corruption and abuse of power, by spreading the tips, tools, and techniques of cutting-edge investigative reporting.

Dr Eric Loo, Media educator,

founding editor of Asia Pacific Media Educator and teaches at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

The Center for Investigative Journalism in New Delhi is timely and, I believe, will be instrumental in reclaiming that 'mission and service', and in time, set the benchmarks of best journalism practices in the context of India's dynamic sociocultural, economic and political environments.

Prasad Kunduri, Senior Journalist

& former APSA-US Congressional Fulbright Fellow

Over the past three decades, journalism in India has grown in strength with accent on specialised reporting. Journalists are now more focussed on issues following developments with deep and abiding interest. I wish CIJ the best and hope it offers a credible platform for serious, unbiased and in-depth reportage.

Nava Thakuria, Guwahati-based journalist

covers India's north-east and neighbouring countries such as Myanmar, Bhutan and Bangladesh.

Working in insurgency hit Assam, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh is increasingly becoming dangerous for journalists. The ongoing insurgency and unrest among the youth of this region, where over 15 armed outfits have been fighting New Delhi on various demands varying from sovereignty to self-rule, put tremendous challenges on local journalists.

Josy Joseph, Editor Special Projects

with the Times of India, New Delhi and a leading investigative journalist.

India will become home to a new powerful tradition of independent, investigative, path-breaking journalism. It is not that Indian media has not shown repeatedly that it is capable of going after the corrupt and exposing the nefarious nexuses that snatch away our freedom, and the last slice of bread from our poor. But those were only glances of what is possible.

Surya Gangadharan, Chief Editor

of Defence & Technology Magazine and former International Affairs Editor at CNN IBN, New Delhi

Good journalism is about great stories founded on facts, backed by sound research and great writing. Investigative journalism is all of that, and an instrument to deepen awareness and strengthen civil liberties. In India, as in many parts of the world, this is of critical relevance given the pressures of development and diversity.

David Blackall, Filmmaker,

cinematographer, consultant director and teaches at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Documentary filmmaking is not always about drama, rather about acquiring footage, and where relevant, that footage is used to push the story forward in television journalism. This builds public awareness, increasing the chances of the project attracting money from public funding bodies.

Prof. M.M. Ansari, Former Information Commissioner

and member of the University Grants Commission of India

"Media has a critical role to monitor the implementation of various provisions of the RTI Act and expose the departments, which do not comply with the disclosure requirements. The media must make a concerted effort to collect, compile and analyse relevant information and data.”